Old Faithfuls

Adam StyborskiThursday, August 22, 2013

Everyone has their own tastes and preferences for decks. There's an endless list for the combinations of features, functions, cards, colors, commanders, and other attributes that can be used to define it. Even if I had a clever way of gathering every minute difference in our collective tastes, making sense of it all would be impractical.

But what does make sense are decks.

That's why I asked you to share your favorite Commander deck, one that's not only stood the test of time (with plenty of updates along the way) but is still in active use. Your "go-to deck" says volumes about you as a player: Aspirations, objectives, processes, plans, styles, and more. It's dense with the things we want to express, and built to do it how we envision it happening.

This is a cross-section of decks you shared, and it covers a remarkable breadth of our styles. Let's go big and get home.

Hugs and Politics

There's one type of deck that, if personified, would be the closest thing to Commander's mascot: The Group Hug deck.

Phelddagrif is a strange creature that holds a stranger place in a multiplayer games. It isn't a killer unto itself, and it's abilities mostly affect opponents in beneficial ways. It plays at what Commander is all about: creating a social game experience. Phelddagrif can fix many things:

Need lands? Here, draw some cards.

Low on life? Have some points to spare.

Need a block? Saprolings make fine pets.

When you craft a deck around all of these beneficial-for-opponents effects, you get Group Hug:

The deck has no real win condition; it exists just to hug. The rest of my decks are more traditional and aim to win. After combing out the table with Jenara, Asura of War or Kresh the Bloodbraided, I usually feel dirty all over and pull out the hippo.

Everyone having twenty+ land by turn three is not uncommon. Only in Commander.

The Impossible Made Possible

Some experiences aren't easily moved to Commander. If you like burn decks—packed with Lightning Bolt and Searing Spear—then you'll find the 60 or more life you need to deal with daunting. Just as challenging is the "mill" strategy: causing opponents cards to be put into their graveyard from their library so that, eventually, they fail to draw a card for their turn and lose.

For some of you, Commander is the format that begs for the impossible to be made real.

This is my favorite Commander deck, mono-blue "Kami of the Crescent Mill."

The deck has several defenders which buy time and feed Doorkeeper's mill. Plentiful mana is gained by mana-producing/land-fetching artifacts, which are in turn fetched by spells and Tezzeret the Seeker. This mana is then used to funnel into big spells like Blue Sun's Zenith, or used on one of the many mill creatures that litter the deck.

Proteus Staff, Void Stalker, Declaration of Naught, and several bounce spells make sure that enemy commanders don't stay on the board for long, and better, can be forced to be shuffled into an opponent's library instead of going to the command zone.

As a personal design choice, I only use cards with the modern frame, which leads to some creative thinking in deck building.

The deck I've had the longest is definitely my 5-Color Progenitus build. Originally, the objective was to take advantage of my minimal collection (I was pretty poor in the beginning, so scraping together a ninety-nine-card singleton deck was pretty tricky), and also play up my absolute love of the 5-Color Control deck that was popular in Standard at the time. It started pretty shaky, missing most of the staples and top-tier mana fixers, but it gave me a great perspective on just how effective basics can be in Commander (even in a 5-Color list!), and how powerful cards that would otherwise be pretty much trash can be, too.

Over time the deck has gotten a lot of good ol' TLC, and it's gotten pretty pimped out too. Going from a deck with a suite of bounce lands (which took Strip Mines every time D: ) and basics for lands now has original duals, shocks, fetches, and all the other nice fixers. I've boosted my collection too, so now it's taken 5-Color Goodstuff to its logical conclusion: a "Planeswalker Super Best Friends" party. Oh, not to mention it's split off into a companion deck (Karona, False God-Enchantress—I'll skip that list, though) that shares the mana base. A third is even in production.

So, I'd say this deck really represents my growth and investment as a Magic player. Without further ado:

Bearly Hanging in There

Commander is multiplayer, and multiplayer formats come with some different rules than duels. The words "each opponent" and "each player" weigh much heavier than in two-player Magic, and incorporating effects that affect everyone is an easy way to boost the power of a deck on Commander without otherwise changing the duel dynamic.

Group Hug decks find effects that are mostly beneficial to apply to everyone. But there's a dark side to the pink hippo of joy: Bear Hug. You might still hand out cards, creatures, and life, but you'd also follow it up with cards that punish players for receiving those gifts.

Bear Hug is the idea of a double-edged sword applied to an entire Commander deck.

Island Fortress

Commander isn't exclusively wacky decks and weird angles. Many of you enjoy taking what you may already enjoy about typical Constructed formats—Modern, Legacy, Standard, etc.—and applying it on a larger scale.

Just because you can't play multiple copies of one cards doesn't mean you can't play multiple cards that are all close copies.

The most common take on "the Constructed" approach has to be building a controlling deck for Commander. Mass removal, spells that steal others' things, and plenty of card-drawing effects, all taken in combination, can allow a player to keep up with an entire table of enemies.

This is my Sol'kanar the Swamp King. The theme is "What's yours is mine, what's his is mine, what's mine is mine, and what's dead is... well, it's probably also mine." The deck steals, commandeers, controls, and swipes creatures, spells, libraries, graveyards, turns, you name it, and likes to repeat things (thus, things like Charmbreaker Devils and Sheoldred).

There's some basic mass removal, and Clone isn't as good now as it was pre-legendary change, but it's still solid. Gather Specimens has gone in and out of this deck a lot, but may go back in soon. Also, Memory Plunder is one of the most undervalued cards for Commander—I'll just cast your Wrath, now, as an instant, when you're attacking me, thanks. This deck's affectionately referred to as the "Hive of Scum and Villainy." The deck almost wants to be a Nicol Bolas deck, but Sol'kanar and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is just a handy backup to have around, and helps gain life to make up for the early hits you take.

The deck is fairly straightforward when it comes to strategy: Make a bunch of tokens and carry the game away, but I decided to focus more on the theme than staples.

Most token decks tend to run cards like Krosan Grip and Elesh Norn but I added Seed Spark and Silver Seraph in place of them. Seed Spark does the same as Krosan Grip for one more mana and no split second. However, the deck is guaranteed the two tokens and is on theme because of that. Silver Seraph is my hidden gem for the deck. I loved the card when I was a child, and even if I did get Elesh Norn, I refuse to take the Seraph out for that reason.

I chose Tolsimir over Rhys the Redeemed because he flies under the radar in a multiplayer game. Citanul Hierophants is also a card that is really good with tokens (I used Martial Coup for forty-two and proceeded to win the game thanks to the Hierophants). I play the deck a lot because it can be really fun, even though it can get boring at times, but with some variation from the regular token decks seen, it can be fun.

The Bloodletting

There's another Commander trope many of you pick up, and it's a dark one. While many decks focus on creatures—creating, copying, stealing, destroying—as the path to victory, there is another way. Black is packed with ways to make extra mana and has access to all the artifacts that ramp players into silly amounts of mana in a hurry.

Then, it's time to strike.

Whether it's with the commander itself or any number of spells that require mana, creating a destructive wave that crashes over an entire game is exactly what some decks aim to do.

The main objective of this deck is to sit back and do nothing for the first few turns, but to make more and more mana using the variety of mana accelerators and use any of the control cards to help fight off any threats. After you have set up your mass amount of mana and have staved off any threats with big creatures or any of the control cards, you will use the many tutors to acquire your kill cards like Exsanguinate (for multiplayer), Exquisite Blood, and Sanguine Bond, any of the other "Drain Life" spells, or just play out Maga for a large amount of damage and a pretty beefy creature.

Day of the Dragons

Commander's origins lie with the push to use the original, beefy Dragon legends of yore in the commander role. The idea of playing Dragon-like creatures—fatty, flying beatsticks—never really went away. While there are plenty of Angels, Demons, Sphinxes, and Beasts of all sorts that can play the role of Dragons in decks, it's still a common sight to see waves of Dragons take to the air to duke it out in a multiplayer battlefield.

My favorite, most-played Commander deck is called "Niv-Mizzet and the Super Dragon Squad." Silly name, but it's a lot of fun.

The basic strategy is to bide time, ramping up with artifacts, and basically not appearing like a threat, while my opponents focus on each other. Suddenly: Dragons. Sphinxes. Planeswalkers. More Dragons. And lots of fun sorceries that will steal their creatures or copy or counter their spells. Or just utterly blast them. I mean, people expect a Dragon, he's the commander. But when it gets ramped up, it's a ton of dragons.

One fun game found my Sphinx of Magosi stolen and passed around to every other player on the board, until it was a 32/32 flier, sitting beside enough other creatures to overwhelm me on my opponent's next untap. I thought I was doomed, until I remembered everybody had been so worried about the big creatures, they had forgotten my Planeswalkers and Ral Zarek had enough counters to go ultimate. Since they'd knocked each other down, it put them well within range for Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius to ping them to death in my three free turns.

First Loves

What draws many of us into Commander is the allure of self-expression. We choose sixty or more unique cards and show off something we want to share.

That primordial experience of sharing can lead to a deck we just can't let go. Kresh the Bloodbraided was my first Commander deck, and I held onto it for a very long time before letting it go. Tuning and tinkering a pet deck into the perfect experience is an art, and it's among the most common ways many of you have a favorite deck too.

The Jund colors—black, red, green—have always been my favorite three colors, so naturally my first choice was them when I went to build a Commander deck, and I always thought Kresh the Bloodbraided was just plain cool.

The idea of the deck is to ramp into big, fat, efficient creatures and then hit people in the face with them through either combat or fling effects. Through constant refinement it has become a little similar to most Kresh decks but mine focuses a lot more on Fling than most builds I've seen. Plus, I'm a fan of tutorless Commander and I've removed them from most of my decks now. This is always fun to play and always wins in an explosive, entertaining way. It's often hard to resist using another deck over this as it's such a blast to play.

Then We Will Fight in the Shade

What makes a Commander deck stick with you is always going to vary, but the end result is the same: Seeking that experience you crave in a way you crafted to happen. This run of fewer decks with more input from you should give some of you food for thought or a place to start. Take your time and look closer at these decks: They are the pride and joy of fellow players, and come packed with powerful interactions you can use in your own.

That's single spaced, with the number of the card in the deck leading each line and without any subsections, header, or words that aren't card names. If you have your deck on Magic Online you can easily export it in the right formatting.

Join us next week when we get a boatload of action from just two cards. See you then!

Adam "Stybs" Styborski joined DailyMTG.com in 2009 to take over Serious Fun, before switching over to begin Command Tower in 2013. With his passion for Commander and community inclusion, you'll find plenty of opportunity each week to share your thoughts about everyone's favorite casual format.